


If only the Lightning Lasted a Little Longer

by TheDaysOfGold



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Friendship, Moving On, Platonic Relationships, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:21:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27515995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDaysOfGold/pseuds/TheDaysOfGold
Summary: Sitting at the CID office block late in the evening, Akane and Ginoza are knee-deep in the Makashima case when Akane finally works up the courage to ask a difficult question of her superior. But for Ginoza, the answer is too much to convey on a night where the forecast predicts a dry thunderstorm.
Relationships: Ginoza Nobuchika/Kougami Shinya, Ginoza Nobuchika/Tsunemori Akane
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	If only the Lightning Lasted a Little Longer

“Mr Ginoza, can I ask a personal question?”

Sitting at the First Inspector’s seat, late on a Wednesday night, Ginoza glances aside to Akane, who’s just asked something of him that he’s not sure he’s able to give. “If you must,” he answers all the same, because it’d be rude not to hear her out. And his tone is short, unchecked, because when they're alone like this, away from the Enforcers and the watchful eyes of Sibyl, he doesn’t feel the need for pretence.

And Akane is glad, because she likes the more genuine side of her colleague. When he’s alone, his words are sharper, sure, but they're clearer too. He doesn’t try to appease anyone, or talk down to anyone, or hold up a fragile and brittle status quo. When he’s alone, he’s a little more rude, a little more vulnerable, and a little more honest.

Just the sort of thing she needs in order to ask this particular question. “Can you tell me about the day Mr Kougami was demoted to Enforcer?”

The question doesn’t strike Ginoza by surprise. Given how many months Akane has been working with them already, such a question is well overdue. Still, he does bristle at the memory of that day.

“You read the reports on the Specimen Case, didn’t you?” He asks, mentally backtracking all the things he’s allowed to say, and all the things confined under the gag-order bestowed upon him by the Chief.

But Akane’s answer isn’t what he was expecting. “I did read that report, but I didn’t want to ask about that day. Rather, I wanted to know about the day that the demotion was handed down. From what I learnt at university, the decline of an Inspector’s hue often comes in the weeks following a traumatic event, and it’s cap-stoned by the end of their career as an Inspector.”

“You don’t believe that an Enforcer can return to an Inspector’s duty, if their Psycho Pass recovers?”

Akane’s taken aback by the question. Of anyone, she didn’t think her superior would ever even entertain the idea of the redemption of a latent criminal, of turning back to the light, healing completely and returning to service. She never thought he’d _want_ that. Enforcers were Enforcers, and Inspectors were Inspectors. Black and white. Just as Ginoza liked it. But this question deviated from the one thing she knew as rock-solid in her partner, and it made her wonder, only briefly, if perhaps he still held out hope for Kougami’s eventual return to the fold.

Her thoughts are interrupted by his continuation of the point. “Either way, there is no record of an Enforcer returning to duty as an Inspector. Latent criminals seldom make a recovery once their psycho pass reaches a threshold.”

Akane can see him trying to avoid the question, but she lets him take this sideroad. “Maybe once they’ve crossed that line, it’s not that they won’t return, but that they can’t?” She muses.

“But why is it that way?” Ginoza counters, turning back to his computer and tapping away at the keys as if to distract himself. Though, no distraction takes from the heart of the conversation. “If a person’s Psycho Pass can rise, then why can’t it come back down again? Why is this a one-sided system? What sort of trauma is so impossible to overcome that they find it impossible?”

“Maybe it’s not a trauma, but something else.”

“Something else?”

Akane pauses on the point, thinking. She’s lit up by nothing more than the white-blue of her computer screen, her brows knitted slightly and her forehead crinkled. Ginoza’s well accustomed to this cute angle she has, only ever aided to by her petite size and innate spunk, but even with his faked myopia, he can see that she’s caught the eye of someone else, and knows well enough to leave it alone.

Still, in these long hours, the mind can’t help but wander.

When she looks up again, clearly oblivious to his inner musings, the focus in her eyes snaps his own back into place. “Maybe it isn’t a trauma that changes people, but rather, their viewpoint of the world changes. It’s not _what_ they think, but _the way_ they think. And it changes them in ways that cannot be reversed.”

“I’m not sure I'm following,” Ginoza answers, hoping that Akane will take the hint as it’s meant and end the conversation there.

But she doesn’t. “It’s like when you learn to ride a bike, or speak another language,” she continues, and her eyes light up because she’s finally found the words on the tip of her tongue. “You can’t just un-learn those things. Sure, you might fall out of practice or forget some of it, but the soul of it is still there. You still remember the feeling of the wind when you're on your bike, or the beauty of French when you get the sentence right for the first time.”

“You speak French?”

“I'm being serious, Mr Ginoza!” She pouts, blatantly pointing out his tactless attempt to change the topic. “Really, please, I want to know about the day Mr Kougami was demoted.”

And they're back at that, because they were always going to be back at that. If there was anything that could be said about Akane, it was her tenacity. Truly, she would endure, long after all the rest had faltered or gone home.

Ginoza sighs, powering down his desktop in preparation of what is to be said. He does this partly in fear of the desktop camera watching over them, but also to shut off the light, to conceal his expression and detach it from the conversation they're about to have. Now, only the light from Akane’s distant monitor reaches his face, but does little to show her what’s there.

Not that it’d be needed, not for Akane, who can quite easily hear the emotion in the words he speaks. “I remember, there was thunder that night, thunder with no rain.”

She remains quiet, because it seems hard enough for him to speak, let alone go back and forward with question and reply. She just sits there, spine straight and ears open, doing her best not to look desperate to know their crew more intimately than she has done for all these months.

“The night the Chief told me that he was being detained for his clouded hue, and the night she said he’d be offered the immediate position as an Enforcer, I remember it had been a troublesome night. Middle of summer, dry grass, and a dry thunderstorm. Everyone was worried about a bushfire starting, out in the country.” He continues, and despite his characteristic monotone, Akane can hear the concealed pain strung through the words, as if he was trying to hide it, trying to cloud the ugly truth in some sort of aesthetic narrative, but unable to manage completely. “I’d been called into the CID, an emergency call, after Kougami had been flagged with an elevated stress warning and taken in.”

“He was made an Enforcer right away?”

“Normally, a latency period is required to see if the hue will return to normal, but in Kougami’s case, Chief Kasse made a call. She believed that the psychological stress of the Specimen Case had altered Kougami’s hue permanently, and was thus irreversible regardless of the treatment used. More than that, at the time, we didn’t know the identity of the killer, and Kougami was our best shot at tracking him down.”

“It seems odd, for the Chief to refuse protocol so quickly. Normally, a thirty-day waiting period is mandatory,”

Ginoza shrugs, she can see this in the low light. “There was something about that case that was different. The Chief wanted the culprit’s head, and it seemed quite literally. We didn’t have time to bring in another Inspector, train and brief them, not when we had an Enforcer that could do the job. I was bumped up to First Inspector, and worked without a partner for the remainder of that case. But despite our best efforts, there was tension in the crew. The blatant refusal to follow proper Enforcer-demotion protocol, the anger within Division One at this mistreatment, the pressure being applied from the Chief and upper-management, the way this killer could move through the shadows without ever being flagged by a scanner or drone; it really was the impossible case." And at this, he signs, and in that one sound alone, Akane can hear that this story is far more complicated than a mere evening's chat. "We never found the culprit. Division Two located some leads, but from what we know, nothing came of it,”

_Or, rather, nothing I'm allowed to tell you about. Truth be told, when the Chief finally got her hands on Kozaburo Toma, mastermind of the Specimen Case, she just made him, disappear._

“How did Mr Kougami take it?”

“Honestly, after the anger died down, he took it in the worst way possible.” Ginoza answers, standing from his chair. He steps around the desk, as if making for the exit, before turning and looking back at her, the rims of his glasses caught in the low light. “He was completely accepting of his fate. It disgusts me, how quickly he gave up the fight.”

“And the rest of the crew?”

At this, Ginoza sounds like a man who’d lost a long and weary battle. “They were no different. They accepted his fate too.”

_I was the only one who put up a fight, but even then, when the pressure mounted, I backed down too. A coward, even for someone like Kougami._

“Is that a sufficient answer, Inspector Tsunemori?”

With the change in title, Akane knows that her superior is at the end of his tether, and that her answer really won’t prolong the conversation or yield any further answers, at least not that night. So she, offers him an easy reply. “Yes, Mr Ginoza. Thank you,”

He nods, but her obedience isn’t lost on him. He wishes he could retell the entire story, but some chapters simply aren’t meant to be read twice. It’s not that he’s wise, that he knows not to dwell on the bitter past, but that he simply cannot bring himself to look upon them again, afraid that he’ll see something other than what he remembers, or that he’ll see what was actually there, not the more comfortable story he’s told himself time and time again.

“Kougami gave up the fight, and was willing to bend to the other side of the law to get his way,” Ginoza says with parting words. “Honestly, maybe you're right. Maybe it isn’t trauma, but a shift in mindset. And, maybe, he’s still willing to bend the law to get what he wants. That trait really ought to make him a criminal, right?”

And then he departs from the office, leaving Akane to wonder if her superior really meant that last part or not. If he could see what was to come, like a soothsayer's prophecy. 

When Ginoza rounds the corner of the office floor, stepping into the hall while a storm begins to rumble outside, there’s someone waiting, leaning against the elevator buttons with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips.

“Yeah, there was lightning that night too,” Kougami mutters, muffled slightly with the cigarette poised between two lips. “And no rain. Your memory doesn't fail you, Gino.”

Ginoza pauses for a moment, before continuing to the lifts. He’s stuck with Kougami for the short duration of the wait, and is in half a mind as to take the stairs, rather than bear witness to the next encounter. “But no fires, fortunately. I remember that.” He answers plainly, as if all they were speaking about was the weather.

“Did you tell her?” Kougami asks, falling in beside him, but there’s no answer. “Of course you didn't,” he chuckles, watching the lift climb up to meet them. “Surprised it took her this long to work up the courage, though.”

“She cares about you.”

Kougami glances aside. “Not like you to say something so obvious.”

“You're right, I phrased that incorrectly,” Ginoza answers, sharper than he wanted, giving away the fact that Kougami had him on edge. “She doesn’t care about _you,_ she cares about what you _represent._ She thinks that if she does her job right, and if she stays moral and upstanding, then she can show you the light. She thinks that if she carries some of the burden you brought upon yourself, then she can help you turn back. She thinks she can lower your hue, just like she does her own, and make you’re an Inspector again.”

“She might be right.” Kougami answers casually. “We’ve seen stranger things that that, haven’t we?”

“You're fundamentally different now Kougami, don’t pretend otherwise. You couldn’t go back to the way you were, towing the line and following orders obediently, not when they led you into that horrific scene, and no matter how much Akane wishes it. The ‘latent’ part of criminal really ought to be understood better. It’s innate to you, just takes the right circumstance to trigger it.”

But again, Kougami just shrugs. “This job doesn’t really care if criminal traits manifest post-trauma, of if they're there to begin with.”

“That doesn’t excuse you turning your back on the rules we all must follow. This work must be done above-board, not by the lax standards of a latent criminal! That’s why your job is beneath ours, because you’ve forgotten the value of order and control. This work is too important to make errors!”

“This work is whatever it needs to be, case by case.”

“You're far too relaxed for the role of an Inspector. Always have been.”

“No point working if it’s just for a position, Gino.” Kougami answers, as if it’s the most casual thing in the world. “Working for a purpose is all that matters.”

“No, you're wrong. I blatantly disagree. Working for a position is the only way to objectively measure your efforts and your success. Working for some vague notion of a ‘purpose’ is nothing more than letting yourself off when you fail. I won’t be so lenient on myself.”

But Kougami just chuckles at this, as if his old partner never had the ability to really deliver a scathing blow, no matter how hard he tried. “Maybe the ‘purpose’ seems vague to you, Gino, because you haven’t found one yet. You will, one day, I know that.”

“Know you place, Enforcer.” Gino answers sharply, as the elevator finally arrives. He steps inside, and Kougami follows. Part of Gino knows this is just to bother him some more, but the Inspector’s lounge is a floor that the Enforcers are not allowed to enter, so knows he’ll be free of this annoyance soon.

“You couldn’t tell her how bad that day really was,” Kougami says, but fortunately for Ginoza, his eyes are on the inside of the elevator doors, so he doesn’t need to return an expression.

“You were listening in after all?”

“Don’t need to Gino,” Kougami answers with a sigh. “I know you couldn’t have told her. If there’s one thing that I can’t puzzle about you, it’s your ability to hide yourself and others from the past, and yet, be stuck in it too.”

Ginoza doesn’t answer this right away, because whatever fire and anger he’d had built up for Kougami has fizzled away. “You know,” he says after a while, feather-quiet. “I count that bloody day, with those bloody dry storms, in the top six worst days of my life.”

Kougami chuckles. “Top six? I didn’t think I’d rate that highly, or that specifically. You keep a record of all your worst days?”

“Yeah,” again, the answer is quiet. “And all the best ones too.”

It’s the sort of honestly that Akane had noticed back in the office, and it brings Kougami to complete stillness. At this point, he glances to Ginoza, standing at his right. There's some significance in that, he's sure, but as the lift arrives on its designated floor, and the time left for him to say something dwindles, not even all of Kougami’s wit and brevity can think of anything meaningful to add. Or, rather, anything meaningful to add in their remaining time, because he still has much to say, even when the moment is too short.

Instead, as the doors open and he glimpses a look at the hall, and the tall windows beyond, he finds something worth saying. “Looks like a cloudy night. We might get some lightning later.”

“If I want a meteorological report, I’ll look online,” Ginoza answers flatly, leaving the lift.

“It’s probably a good thing that this happened to me first,” Kougami says to Gino’s back, and the change in conversation induces whiplash in the Inspector. But as the elevator doors close, Kougami’s closing sentence is shut off with it. “That way I can help you through it too, when the time finally comes.”

And as if cued onto stage, the night’s first strike of lightning flashes through the windows and floods the hall in blue light, illuminating not only the space, but perhaps an inner truth of their working relationship. But, like all lightning strikes, it’s too swift for Ginoza to see the whole truth clearly.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all,
> 
> This is my attempt at being more frequent here. I'm neck-deep in my new manuscript, so I'll try and update as often as possible. All of your feedback and comments really keeps me motivated, so keep that coming!
> 
> This short story came out of a comment asking about the day that Kougami was demoted to Enforcer. I haven't quite thought through that entire scenario yet, but I do like the idea that, when Akane asks on it, Gino can't quite bring himself to answer. Not sure if that's to protect her from the truth, or because he can't bring himself to relive the day. Eh, either way, consider this the prelude to the story of Kogami's demotion, a little something I think we'll call The Fall. Also, gold star for anyone who can find the reference to Season 3.
> 
> As always, I write novels, so if you want something to tide you over, check them out. It really means the world to me. Link in my bio.
> 
> (also, we had a lightning storm on the night I wrote this story, which is a fantastic backdrop to write to!)
> 
> Stay safe everyone. More stories to come!


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